Grounded ship incident reflects poorly on CT port

The police in Cape Town are apparently well-known for their skills in rescuing stranded ships. At least that’s the impression you get from a story carried by the May 15 edition of the Cape Times. Writer Melanie Gosling told the tale of a Sunday morning phone call to port control from a concerned Clifton flat resident who was reporting a long-line fishing boat about to be grounded off First Beach, but was fobbed off with the instruction to phone the police. Caller Mea Bruning and her husband did that, and also contacted the Table Bay National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), who immediately came to the scene. And, after the SA Maritime Safety Authority (Samsa) and tug boat owner/ operators Smit Amandla had become involved, the salvage operation for the stranded Japanese fishing vessel was raised to a national level. A further call from Bruning to the port manager, Sanjay Govan, raised the promise that he would “make sure it doesn’t happen again, and make sure our people know how to deal with it” – something that you would have thought a port control should already know how to do.